Unseen Consequences: The Emotional and Social Fallout of Divorce on Children

How Divorce Erodes the Ability to Form Healthy Relationships in Adulthood

This post reflects on the long-term consequences of divorce on children based on Judith Wallerstein's influential study. It argues that while divorce might seem like a solution to an unhappy marriage, it often has detrimental effects on children, particularly when it comes to their ability to form healthy, lasting relationships. Drawing from personal experience and societal trends, the piece suggests that staying in a marriage for the sake of children is often a better choice than divorce unless there is extreme abuse involved. It also critiques the current state of divorce laws and the societal influences that encourage divorce, emphasizing the importance of considering the impact on children before making such a decision.

A wise man once told me don’t get divorced once you have children. Now, he had what looked like an exemplary marriage from the outside, but he ended up divorced anyway after his wife cheated on him. He died shortly thereafter out of shame, but regardless, the principle he was articulating was correct. Humans are fallible and we don’t always measure up to our principles, but it doesn’t mean the principles themselves are incorrect.

The gold standard of divorce research is the Judith Wallerstein study California Children of Divorce. Beginning in 1971, she followed 131 middle class white children between the ages of 3 and 18 from 60 divorced families in Marin County, California for twenty five years, with intensive interviews conducted every five years. She also followed a control group of white middle class children from families who did not get divorced. The study itself is not very long and is an easy read, which is available here.

Wallerstein started this study after divorce rates tripled within a few years starting in 1960, which were caused by increasing secularism, atomization, female participation in the workforce¹, the egalitarian ratchet effect, and increased material prosperity (as material prosperity and decadence go hand in hand):

The wonders of “progress”

Scenes like this depicting marriage tension in the 1950s via Mad Men were common:

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Results of the Study

The results of Wallerstein’s study were unequivocal: No matter how bad a marriage was or how easy a divorce was, children of divorce almost universally had worse outcomes than children whose parents stayed together. These outcomes generally began manifesting itself during the teenage years when these children were beginning to form relationships with the opposite sex, but the effects were lifelong and multi-faceted. I’ll quote at length from the central findings because they are important:

The central finding of this study is that parental divorce impacts detrimentally the capacity to love and be loved within a lasting, committed relationship. At young adulthood, when love, sexual intimacy, commitment, and marriage take center stage, children of divorce are haunted by the ghosts of their parents’ divorce and are frightened that the same fate awaits them. These fears, which reach a crescendo at young adulthood, impede their developmental progress into full adulthood. Many eventually overcome their fears, but the struggle to do so is painful and can consume a decade or more of their lives. In addition to overcoming their fear of failure, they have a great deal to learn about the give and take of living with another person, about how to deal with differences, and about how to resolve conflicts. This is knowledge that children acquire from growing up with both parents in reasonably harmonious, intact families. As our study ended, 60% of the women and 40% of the men had been able to establish reasonably gratifying and enduring relationships that included a satisfying sexual relationship. Close to 40% had opted for parenthood. The remainder said they were not interested in having children. A good number enjoyed successful careers but suffered from severe loneliness. Because most of these people were still in their 30s, we may yet see changes in their attitudes toward relationships and parenthood.

One third of the men and women were openly pessimistic about marriage and divorce and sought to avoid both. “If you don’t marry, then you don’t divorce,” was their mantra. Only a few were outright cynical. The majority were eager, even desperate, for a lasting relationship, and fearful that they would never achieve it. They did not want the lives their parents had. Their message was clear: “My parents’ divorce is still incomprehensible to me. They met in college. They fell in love. They were compatible in their tastes and values. So, what is to keep the same fate from happening to me?” Over and over, they told us, “I’d love to get married, but I’m sure that I’d jinx it.” Or, “Any relationship I’m in will dissolve.”…

As the study ended, 42% of the men had never married or cohabited for longer than 6 months, compared with 6% in the comparison group. Half of the single men in the divorce group led sad, isolated lives. One young man went so far as to discipline himself to go without dinner so that he could avoid the misery of eating alone. Another group of men were inordinately hurt by the failure of a first love affair and withdrew from the dating scene for years thereafter. Many were astonishingly passive in their relationships with women and altogether clueless in responding to the woman’s wishes or complaints when they lived together….

By contrast, members of the comparison group, even those raised in disappointing marriages, were hopeful that sooner or later they would meet the right person and enter into a satisfying, committed relationship, usually involving marriage. Considering the high incidence of divorce in our culture, we expected more doubts, but only a small minority admitted to worry. “I never doubted I’d marry and have a family” was a typical comment. They expected ups and downs in their relationships, but they did not expect to fail, if they chose carefully. The issue of choice of partner, which was so baffling to the children of divorce, was where the comparison group told us they put their greatest efforts. Their confidence that things would eventually work out well enabled most to survive heartbreak and to delay marriage until they felt ready. Often they drew on their family of origin for images of what they wanted. “I didn’t want a volatile lady like my mom.” Many men and women mentioned that they wanted someone who would be a good parent to their future children. Asked how she chose her husband, one woman laughingly answered, “Besides his being devastatingly good looking, you mean? I wanted someone who wasn’t too serious, who would treat me well, who would be a good father, and was someone I’d like to wake up with 50 years later.” This way of thinking, which came easily to many of those raised in intact homes, was omitted from the voices of the women in the divorce sample….

The wide differences in the incidence of marriage and divorce between the children of divorce and the children of intact families are in line with national data (personal communication, Norval Glenn, November 1997, based on figures from the Statistical Abstract of the U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1997, for adults ages 18–44). By the end of our study, 60% of the divorced group had married, as compared with 80% of the comparison group and 84% of the national sample. Fifty percent of those married before age 25. Of those, 57% divorced. In the comparison group, only 11% married before age 25, and of those, 25% divorced. The overall divorce rate by the end of the study was 40% for the children of divorce as compared with 35% nationwide for persons in that age group, but only 9% for our comparison group. The outcomes of later marriage, for both the divorce group and the comparison group, are unpredictable. In looking at these delayed marriages, the majority seem to have improved. Several went out of their way to marry people from intact families. “He has no baggage,” one woman declared triumphantly in describing her spouse. “No one has ever been divorced in his family.”

The study ended in the mid to late 1990s. The effects of decadence, nihilism, entitlement and feminism have become more widespread and entrenched since then, and its effects even worse with society completely falling apart on many levels.

The chart below traces the “divorce, separated, or in second or later marriage” trend between 1960, 1980 and 2017 cohorts. People were much more likely to get divorced at a younger age in prior decades, but that’s just because people delay marriage until much later now. You can see how divorce in 2017 becomes higher starting at age 40 and massively spikes thereafter compared to earlier cohorts, thereafter remaining at a rate double that of earlier generations:

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Personal Experience

I’m going to speak from experience as to the veracity of Wallerstein’s study: my parents divorced when I was young, and it had an extremely negative impact on my life as well as negatively impacted ways I interacted with women, even if it took years for those effects to manifest. The comment “Several went out of their way to marry people from intact families” very much applied to me, and I actively sought out women who came from healthy, intact families because I knew my own background was so screwed up. I had not been modeled strong, healthy relationships growing up, so I had no one to model my own relationships after. Although I also had other reasons for a then-failure to launch.²

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The Impact of COVID

Many marriages ended during COVID, as women in the smartphone era became increasingly liberal and erratic. This was amplified by the constant feedback loops they found on platforms like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where they encouraged one another in narrow echo chambers. Highly educated urban women began enforcing establishment ideology at home, creating tense situations. During COVID, they frequently complained and panicked about things like mask mandates, vaccinations, and going outside. As Orwell wrote, “It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.” These women are currently in zombie idle mode because Trump is doing what the elites want him to do, but our overlords may flip the switch and make them hysterical again at their whim, which creates an underlying uneasiness and instability about long-term relationship planning. Who knows what our elites will get these dancing marionettes to do in the future? If they will inject themselves with untested, experimental mRNA “vaccines”, they will do anything they are told.

This is a novel and unusual situation, a result of mass smartphone use. Men were using the internet long before the smartphone era, but women were not really using it much prior to 2012:

The Mayans were correct and 2012 signified the start of a new era—one that marked the rise of extreme liberalism. See this post by

Erik Hoel

for more on this point.

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On Happy Marriages

Happiness within marriage is a luck of the draw, although happy marriages are anecdotally fairly uncommon. Many couples will stay married for the benefit of the kids (which they should be doing absent extreme abuse), even if they are not happy. You can do everything to search for red flags ahead of time but that doesn’t mean other problems won’t develop later. Reading famed psychologist Hans Eysenck’s autobiography - who wrote a book on astrology I covered previously - I noticed he had a bad first marriage and got divorced long before it was societally acceptable, but the effect it had on his son was very negative:

Why did our marriage break up? It is difficult for me to say - people often drift apart without any obvious reason. I was still young and immature when we were married; it is well known that early marriages seldom last. As an enemy alien [a German living in England] I had to make my career against great odds - I had to give all my time to research, writing and lecturing, to reading, thinking and testing. That left little time for marital togetherness. I cannot blame Margaret for getting fed up with me, particularly when conditions were hard in the war and its immediate aftermath. When I fell in love with [his second wife, who he was happily married to for over fifty years] the decision to end what had become a loveless marriage was inevitable; I knew that my whole happiness depended on it. Margaret was young and attractive enough to have many suitors. Leaving Michael [his son] behind was worst; we always had a good understanding. Human affairs are always messy and involved; I was truly worry about what I was doing, but I could see no real alternative.

This is unfortunately a sad and very common experience.

Julius Evola wrote in 1945 that American women base their relationships on trading sex for material goods³ and that divorce heavily favors them:

The much-vaunted sex appeal of American women is drawn from films, reviews and pin-ups, and is in large print fictitious. A recent medical survey in the United States showed that 75% of young American women are without strong sexual feeling and instead of satisfying their libido they seek pleasure narcissistically in exhibitionism, vanity and the cult of fitness and health in a sterile sense. American girls have 'no hang-ups about sex'; they are 'easy going' for the man who sees the whole sexual process as something in isolation thereby making it uninteresting and matter-of-fact, which, at such a level, it is meant to be. Thus, after she has been taken to the cinema or a dance, it is something like American good manners for the girl to let herself be kissed - this doesn't mean anything. American women are characteristically frigid and materialistic. The man who 'has his way' with an American girl is under a material obligation to her. The woman has granted a material favour. In cases of divorce American law overwhelmingly favours the woman. American women will divorce readily enough when they see a better bargain. It is frequently the case in America that a woman will be married to one man but already 'engaged' to a future husband, the man she plans to marry after a profitable divorce.

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Conclusion

If you’re in a bad marriage with kids, think about Wallerstein’s study before you end it even if it is painful to stick with it, at least until they’re grown up and out of the home.

Biblical Man

has a similar and strong post on not getting divorced here, calling it the initiation of a generational curse. It’s tempting to think “oh, my wife and I fight a lot, isn’t it setting a toxic example for the kids if we stay together? Isn’t it better for them to see each of us in a loving relationship with someone new? They can model my better behavior in my second attempt!” If Wallerstein’s study is to be believed, the answer is an unequivocal no absent extreme abuse. All states today recognize no-fault divorce, but it is an abomination at least if children are involved (if you’re married and don’t have kids, go ahead and get divorced quickly if you want with no judgment from me). Divorce laws are so favorable to women that they initiate 70% of divorces in America. After all, many think “oh, I can end this marriage, get alimony and child support, find a new man and have the best of both worlds!” A terrible, noxious perspective, but one the government and society encourages. Taking into account the impact of divorce on the psyches of children should be more widely understood within society as a whole, and no-fault divorce should be ended.

Divorce involving children may still occur for some, but it should be a far more challenging and serious decision due to the significant negative impact it has on them. This is a harsh and challenging world where evil thrives and the good suffer, a world rooted in philosophical pessimism. However, when you have children your foremost responsibility is to shield and protect them from this, not to add to their burden and perpetuate a cycle of suffering.

For further reading on male/female relations, see the following posts: On the inversion of male and female forms, The different conceptions of marriage in patriarchal vs. matriarchal societies, and Prominent pickup artists: Where are they now?

I’ll end with Blink-182’s 2002 song Stay Together For The Kids, composed by guitarist Tom DeLonge, who based its lyrics on his parents' divorce and its effect on him:

Thanks for reading.

Addendum 1: Someone linked me to this strong 1993 article from The Atlantic, which discusses the Wallerstein study along with other data and argues, “The social-science evidence is in: though it may benefit the adults involved, the dissolution of intact two-parent families is harmful to large numbers of children. Moreover, the author argues, family diversity in the form of increasing numbers of single-parent and stepparent families does not strengthen the social fabric but, rather, dramatically weakens and undermines society.” Furthermore:

According to a growing body of social-scientific evidence, children in families disrupted by divorce and out-of-wedlock birth do worse than children in intact families on several measures of well-being. Children in single-parent families are six times as likely to be poor. They are also likely to stay poor longer. Twenty-two percent of children in one-parent families will experience poverty during childhood for seven years or more, as compared with only two percent of children in two parent families. A 1988 survey by the National Center for Health Statistics found that children in single-parent families are two to three times as likely as children in two-parent families to have emotional and behavioral problems. They are also more likely to drop out of high school, to get pregnant as teenagers, to abuse drugs, and to be in trouble with the law. Compared with children in intact families, children from disrupted families are at a much higher risk for physical or sexual abuse.

Contrary to popular belief, many children do not "bounce back" after divorce or remarriage. Difficulties that are associated with family breakup often persist into adulthood. Children who grow up in single-parent or stepparent families are less successful as adults, particularly in the two domains of life--love and work--that are most essential to happiness. Needless to say, not all children experience such negative effects. However, research shows that many children from disrupted families have a harder time achieving intimacy in a relationship, forming a stable marriage, or even holding a steady job.

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1. This is due to the nature of female hypergamy, where women only want a mate who is higher status than she is. Female participation in the workplace raises the social status of women, as does higher education achievement, higher earnings, etc., which shrinks the supply of men who are higher status than the woman is. A woman whose status moves up with grow dissatisfied with her current man if her previously lower status becomes higher than his. Women would rather be alone and childless than be with a lower status male. This is the backdrop for understanding the amazing Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew, covered previously here, begging highly educated men to marry highly educated women in the Great Marriage Debate — men didn’t want to because men care about youth more than a woman’s status, and high status women are more demanding, so they were ending up alone - which Lee Kuan Yew hated because he wanted eugenic birthrates based on IQ and not dysgenic ones. Singapore today has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world and the highest unhappiness rate despite it’s material wealth.

2. These reasons included being excessively praised for character traits instead of praised for accomplishments in childhood, which led to a massively oversized ego with nothing to substantiate it, being Loser clique (defined in the second half of this post), and negative progressed astrological influences (astrology in general is discussed here). Clique theory will be the subject of it’s own future post and there will likely be another on failing to launch.

3. Of course it works both ways; men trade material goods for the expectations of sex.